MOTHERLINK
For someone who dreads the holiday, treading by mothers and offspring laughing together along the mountain path, young families testing each other’s flavors of frozen custard, and having a similar-aged bubbly stranger feeling sexy in her new dress, arm-locked with her partner to their dinner reservation, stop dead in front of me to exclaim, “Happy Mother’s Day!” as I walk out with my takeout bag, here is my Mother’s Day post.
This past week has been a trifecta of heavy life-events, each of which warrant a story of their own. Sunday May 8, I spent the fairest day of the year thus far, with my 11-year-old best girl, my Border Collie, Joni. We hiked our favorite Vermont paths, lapped-up maple creemies at Palmer Lane, chased balls, spun and leapt into the blue for Frisbees, and splashed in the Brown’s River. Monday morning, I cradled her beautiful 43-pound body in my arms, tearfully kissing her goodbye as she took her last breath. I’m grateful for the grace of the beautiful times we had and, I’m heartbroken. Wednesday was my late husband David’s 61st birthday. 21-years after his little boys joined him in blowing out the candles of the last cake I iced “Happy Birthday Daddy.” Thursday, I closed on our home in Long Island, New York, where our 24- and 26-year-old former selves built and lived-out our dreams from 1988-2001.
This is for the motherless daughter, the grieving mother, the mourning widow and divorcee, the mothers who wait by the phone, and the women who were birthed but not birthers, whether by misfortune or choosing. All but the latter which wears as hammered metal distress on my animal body ,on any day, particularly on the second Sunday of May. Despite the uncountable circumstances that shape our womanhood, and the fallacies we vex ourselves with, we are all of mothers in common.
If there’s one thing that my obsessive passion in ancestry research has shown me it’s that every mother’s passage within and through generations is difficult. From the moment the cosmic explosion of cells forms tailless spines and fingernails, we all survive by blind will, make choices with fraudulent insurance, and eat sugar when the milk turns sour.
When I sat down two weeks ago to write this year’s “Mother’s Day” post, I didn’t want to re-write my wistful, and complex, motherly-daughterly story, nor gift-wrap some sage log of aromatic smoke to shade the lines with positivity, too noxious for my own amenability. So I defaulted to my palliative list-making decompression tool by opening my family tree in pedigree view and made a vertical list of the mothers who came before the mothers, unto a continuous unfolding of maiden signatures, fanning horizontally beyond the margins in expanding binary sequence. (This would make my late IT programmer husband very happy with me.)
Wow, so many mothers labored, nursed, washed, threaded, crossed boundaries and oceans. They survived long enough to birth sons and daughters to be re-born, again and again into daughters they’ll never name. How a single cell waits quivering in the vessel cradled in a female ovary, the moment she’s born, again, and again. Until I am in the World, naming them. We are fertile versions of one another, arising from something familiar, opening to a forthcoming, like nesting dolls. Within each of us there is an indirect knowing. We are a suggestion. A run-on sentence. An ongoing conversation that is transcribed as the strands that encode us unwind and replicate.
About this poem: This poem is the result of seven years of ancestry research culminating in the form of a List Poem. As I generated the list of my direct-line maternal lineage on both maternal and paternal sides, a pattern in the shape of a helix emerged. The names of my mothers are framed by Great-Grandmother Generation (i.e., 2x, 3x…), thirteen in all, and birth-year. In this work, I’m descended from 15 generations of women. Though 163 of my foremothers are named to date, 16,384 Great-Grandmothers have birthed thirteen generations of women over a span of 439-years so that my signature joins the linkage.
MOTHERLINK
MOTHER'S Maternal Mothers – My Mother: Elizabeth Anna (Manhattan, NYC) – 1943
HAJDU: (Romania / Hungary)
GM - Karolina “Anna” -1904
G-GM - Julia Major – 1880
Maternal Grandfather’s Mothers:
TESENY / TESENYI: (Lastovce & Zemplin Hungary / Trebisŏv, Slovakia)
G-GM - Julianna - 1883
2x - Maria - 1855
3x – (Anna – 1844)
4x - Mária - 1795
5x - Ersébet – abt. 1770
3x Veronica - 1835
Father’s Maternal Mothers – My paternal grandmother: Eleanor Elizabeth (Bronx, NYC) - 1915
EYNON: (Gloucestershire, England)
* G-GM – Louis “Lulu” - 1883
** 2x Anna Maria - 1845
3x - Anne – 1818
4x - Sarah – 1783
5x - Sarah – 1758
6x – Sara – abt. 1735
6x - Elizabeth - abt. 1730
5x - Sarah – 1753
4x - Mary – 1787
5x - Sarah – 1748
6x - Elizabeth – 1720
6x - Ann – 1712
7x - Anna – 1691
8x - Mary – 1664
9x - Mary – 1638
10x - Frances – 1613
11x - Margery – 1595
8x – Maria “Mary” - 1650
10x - Isobel – 1579
11x - Margaret Ann - 1562
5x - Sarah – 1754
6x - Elizabeth Alice– 1729
7x - Alice – 1709
7x – Sarah - 1675
8x - Margrett – 1641
9x - Joseyas – 1605
10x - Susanna – 1557
11x - Elizabeth – 1528
11x - Elizabeth – 1524
10x - Elizabeth – 1585
11x - Margery – 1560
LOHSE: (Germany)
* G-GM - Louise “Lulu” – 1883
** 2x - Anna Maria - 1845
3x - Elisabeth - 1820
4x – Christina – abt. 1798
4x - Anna Maria - 1794
5x - Anne Marie – abt. 177
6x - Eva - 1728
7x - Anna Maria - 1701
8x - Anna Maria – abt. 1680
8x - Anna Maria – abt. 1679
9x - Anna Maria – abt. 1655
3x - Henriette Sophie Caroline - 1815
4x - Henriette Wilhelmine - 1795
4x - Louise Catherine - 1769
5x - Barbara – 1775
PRICE: (England & Wales)
2x - Elizabeth – 1855
3x - Elizabeth “Betsy” – 1828
4x - Catherine – 1800
5x - Sarah – 1774
6x - Barbara – 1749
7x - Frances - 1729
6x - Jane - 1750
5x - Rebekah – 1764
6x - Elizabeth – 1736
7x - Elizabeth – abt. 1716
9x - Mary – 1685
3x - Margaret Bridget – 1801
4x - Elizabeth – 1779
5x - Elizabeth – 1750
6x - Margery – 1726
7x - Elizabeth – 1700
7x - Hannah – 1700
7x - Dorothy – 1708
8x - Sarah – 1680
9x - Elizabeth - 1650
5x - Hannah – 1725
6x - Hester – 1700
7x - Anne – 1675
8x – Lady Margaret - 1591
10x – Lady Bridget – 1550
11x – Lady Bridget - 1524
8x - Sarah – 1635
9x - Mary – 1594
10x - Lady Joan – 1578
5x - Anne - 1769
Father’s Paternal Mothers:
PFLUM: (Germany / Ireland)
G-GM - Ethel – 1889
2x - Mary – 1867
3x - Bridget – 1835
3x – Catherine Dorothea – 1823
4x – Margaretha – abt. 1800
4x – Maria – abt. 1817
4x – Maria Katharina – 1786
5x – Apollonia – 1741
6x – Anna Catharina – abt. 1720
6x – Anna Maria – 1728
7x – Anna Maria – 1688
8x – Anna Ottilla – 1655
9x – Anna - 1623
9x – Anna Maria – 1617
10x – Margaretha – abt. 1597
11x – Anna – abt. 1570
11x – Margaretha – abt. 1560
12x – Barbara – 1538
13x - Maria Barbara - 1530
12x – Martha - 1539
10x – Maria - 1567
8x – Maria – 1665
9x – Anna Maria – 1628
10x – Catharina – 1605
11x – Maria – 1570
12x – Zephia – 1522
8x – Maria – 1627
9x – Anna – 1592
10x – Margaretha – 1571
8x – Anna – abt. 1600
5x – Anna – 1764
6x – Margaretha – 1731
7x – Anna – 1671
8x – Anna 1631
9x – Maria - 1608
8x – Barbara – 1635
9x – Eva – abt. 1592
10x – Anna - 1549
FARRELL: (Ireland)
2x G-GM – Mary Ann – 1867
3x – Julia - 1837
4x – Elizabeth – 1801
5x – Julian – 1775
4x – Sarah – 1805
5x – Mary – 1780
MESSNER: (Germany)
4x – Eva Elisabetha – 1817
5x – Catharina Elisabetha – 1789
6x – Catherina - 1765
7x – Louisa/Lovisa – 1745
7x – Maria Magdelina – 1740
5x – Anna Eva – 1755
6x – Anna Maria Dorothea – 1746
7x – Anna Maria - 1720
5x – Anna Barbara – 1769
6x – Maria Catharina – 1740
7x – Maria Katharina – 1710
8x – Anna Eva – 1684
9x – Eva - 1655
9x – Anna Margaretha – 1650
9x – Anna - 1665
8x – Lucia – 1688
7x – Maria Barbara - 1708
6x – Maria Elisabetha – 1719
7x – Maria Eva – 1687
7x – Maria Katharina – 1680
8x – Margaretha – 1625
9x - Margaretha – 1604
10x – Margaretha – 1577
11x – Barbara Elizabeth - 1570
8x – Margaretha – 1660
8x – Veronica – 1649
9x – Veronica - 1615
9x – Veronika – 1626
10x – Veronika N. – 1604
10x – Catharina – 1604
11x – Appollonia – 1580
11x – Catharina – 1559
4x – Johanna “Joanna” – abt. 1804
Also the auxiliary mother-figures who enhance my life experience; my lovely God-Mother, Carol. And my mother from a lover, Hiro.
Also my sisters, aunts, cousins, and nieces who have enriched the texture of my life.
© Deborah Garcia 2022. All rights reserved.
